Our Great Adventure: Bay of Fires Day 132 28/01/2015

Forgot to mention that we saw a wombat yesterday, wondering across the road. There's an abundance of wildlife here. Unfortunately a huge amount ends up as road kill. They ask that you avoid driving at sunrise and sunset as most are nocturnal, if you do there's a recommended reduced speed limit in most areas. We set off after a leisurely breakfast and packing up to head to Marakoopa Caves (which means "handsome" in Aboriginal) at Mole Creek. The caves were found by two brothers back in early 1900's and opened to the public in 1920 by their father before being reclaimed by the government. You have to join a guided tour and the route is a well made, light path (very different from the caves we went in at Vang Vieng). The cave includes delicate stalactites and stalagmites as you walk up through the passage, pass the 'palm tree' to the 'cathedral'. On the way back we stopped to see the glow worms shining from the ceiling. From here we continued east with the plan to stay over night at St Helens, the nearest town to the south end of the Bay of Fires. We stopped at Deloraine, which is the main market town in the area, for a lovely and very expensive lunch before driving on towards Launceston, Tasmania's second city. We drove through the city but despite the glowing write up in Lonely Planet we didn't really see anything that impressed us and so we continued on east through rich agricultural land to Scottsdale and, finally after going up and down numerous windy roads, reached St Helens on the east coast where we stopped for the night. St Helens began life as a whaling and sealing settlement in the 1830's and is now an important fishing port. It's set on the wide and protected Georges Bay which we had a stroll along. Back at our campsite we were entertained by pesky seagulls on the roof of our van at night - at least it made a change from possums and wallabies!